We seek to be transparent in all of our activities as a College and therefore want to be clear about how we use cookies and digital re-marketing tools to improve our visitors’ experience when using our websites and to promote our courses and events. This policy sets out the reasons we use cookies, the types of cookies we use and how long these cookies are operational on your computer or device.
This policy relates to The Bedford College Group (registered Bedford College) and includes the brands Bedford College, National College for Motorsport, Shuttleworth College, The Bedford Sixth Form and Tresham College. It also includes any other brands we add to this group in the future.
This policy applies to any person or group or people who visit our website and social media.
What are cookies?
We use the term cookie to describe cookies and similar technologies such as tags and pixels. Cookies are small data files that websites place on your computer, laptop or mobile device.
Our use of cookies
We use Cookies for the following purposes:
- To improve the performance of our websites by understanding which parts work well, and which don’t.
- To deliver relevant online advertising to you both on our websites and elsewhere. This is sometimes done by combining data that we already have about you with the data collected through Cookies. These Cookies are placed by us and selected third parties and enable adverts to be presented to you on ours and third party websites.
- To measure how effective our online advertising and marketing communications are.
- To enable us to collect information about how you and other people use our websites.
- To improve your experience on our websites, for example we use Cookies to remember the subject areas that you have looked at and to personalise your experience.
What cookies do we use?
We use the following Cookies:
Strictly necessary Cookies
These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They are necessary for the safety, security and integrity of the site. For example they help support the structure of the pages that are displayed to you, help to improve navigation and allow you to return to pages you have previously visited. This type of Cookie only lasts for the duration of the time you are visiting the website. When you leave the website they are deleted automatically.
Performance Cookies or analytical Cookies
They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. The data is aggregated and anonymised, which means we cannot identify you as an individual.
Targeting Cookies
These Cookies will collect information about your browsing habits and allow us to show you adverts while you are browsing our site and other sites on the internet. They are set by us or by carefully selected third parties. They help us to understand the performance of our marketing activities and improve the relevance of the adverts that you see. These cookies will remain active for a maximum of four weeks after you have visited our website.
Blocking or restricting Cookies
You can stop Cookies being used on your device by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to block the deployment of all or some Cookies. Please note, if you use your browser settings to block Cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
The table below explains the cookies we use and why.
| Cookie | Name | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie Consent | Name:moove_gdpr_popup | Purpose: This will remember that you are happy to allow cookies on our website. This cookie is set to expire after 14 days if accepted. |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:_ga | Purpose: Used to distinguish users and expires in 2 years |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:_gid | Purpose: Used to distinguish users and expires in 24 hours |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:_gat | Purpose: Used to throttle request rate and expires in 1 minute |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:-utma | Purpose: This allows Google Analytics to determine unique visitors to our site. The cookie expires 2 years from initial creation or from update of cookie |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:-utmb | Purpose: This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session on our site. The cookie will expire 30 minutes from initial creation of from update of the cookie |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:-utmc | Purpose: This is used in conjunction with the -utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. This cookie will expire once you have closed your session with our website (once you have closed your browser) |
| Cookie:Google Analytics | Name:-utmz | Purpose: This cookie is used by google to store where a visitor came from (search engine, search keyword, link). This cookie will expire 6 months from its initial creation or from update of cookie. |
| Cookie:Google Adsense | Name: _gcl_au | Purpose: To store and track conversions. |
| Cookie: Click Dimensions | Name: cuvid | Purpose: This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to the site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that the application uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure. |
| Cookie: Click Dimensions | Name: cusid | This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with the site. When a user views a page on the site, the script code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on the site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a user pauses on a page on the site for longer than 30 minutes. |
| Cookie: Click Dimensions | Name: cuvon | Used to signal the last time a visitor viewed a page. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjSessionUser{site_id} | Hotjar cookie that is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjSession{site_id} | A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensues that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjClosedSurveyInvites | Hotjar cookie that is set once a user interacts with an External Link Survey invitation modal. It is used to ensure that the same invite does not reappear if it has already been shown. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjDonePolls | Hotjar cookie that is set once a user completes a survey using the On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the same survey does not reappear if it has already been filled in. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjMinimizedPolls | Hotjar cookie that is set once a user minimizes an On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimized when the user navigates through the site. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjShownFeedbackMessage | Hotjar cookie that is set when a user minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if the user navigates to another page where it is set to show. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjSessionTooLarge | Causes Hotjar to stop collecting data if a session becomes too large. This is determined automatically by a signal from the WebSocket server if the session size exceeds the limit. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjSessionRejected | If present, this cookie will be set to '1' for the duration of a user's session, if Hotjar rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket due to server overload. This cookie is only applied in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjSessionResumed | A cookie that is set when a session/recording is reconnected to Hotjar servers after a break in connection. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjid | Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjRecordingLastActivity | This should be found in Session storage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a user recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the user performs an action that Hotjar records). |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjTLDTest | When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjUserAttributesHash | User Attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjCachedUserAttributes | This cookie stores User Attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. Collected attributes will only be saved to Hotjar servers if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool, but the cookie will be used regardless of whether a Feedback tool is present. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjLocalStorageTest | This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar Tracking Script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted almost immediately after it is created. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjIncludedInPageviewSample | This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjIncludedInSessionSample | This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | This cookie is used to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjFirstSeen | This is set to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjViewportId | This stores information about the user viewport such as size and dimensions. |
| Cookie: hotjar | _hjRecordingEnabled | This is added when a Recording starts and is read when the recording module is initialized to see if the user is already in a recording in a particular session. |
